Techniques and practices for local responses to HIV/AIDS: A UNAIDS toolkit

This toolkit, produced by the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) for UNAIDS, documents the experiences of communities around the world in dealing with HIV and AIDS. Its objective is to help strengthen the capacity and competence of different actors working in HIV and AIDS at the local level to help foster effective responses. To this end, the toolkit offers techniques and practice for others to adapt to their own context. It is meant to be complementary to the framework for Self Assessment of AIDS competence, as it provides a framework for documenting practices and techniques. It also provides a common source of practical examples that can help organisations advance from one level of competence to another.

Part one outlines 20 techniques for application in different stages of the planning cycle. It identifies techniques useful for awareness raising and mobilisation, situation analysis, planning, and monitoring and evaluation. These techniques are meant to help a facilitator support an audience to analyse their own situation and to establish their needs and priorities in order to plan interventions. Part two describes 50 practices used to address one or more specific problems. The practices are grouped into four overlapping categories: prevention, care and treatment, support and mitigation, and partnership and coordination. [adapted from author]